There's been a lot of talk around this city lately about what art is and what artists do, and while there's no way to speak in general about such a strangely diverse sector of the population (although I've had plenty of words put in my mouth), there's a tremendously good exhibition this month that would fit my definition--if I had to have one--pretty closely.

It's called extra, by Jesse Paul Miller, and trying to describe it is like trying to describe a dream: The more you add words to the free-floating impressions that are the medium of dreams, the more you divorce the dream from the complicated feelings it elicits. This, to me, indicates the kind of complexity that can't be boiled down to a sound bite, a complexity that is so specific to the way the artist thinks that only the work can describe itself.

But of course I'm obliged to try.

Miller has been compared to Marcel Duchamp, and if the comparison holds (I think it does), it's because his work isn't just a matter of making art out of found objects--plenty of artists do that. Miller's work creates a dense text that can be read in various ways. The language of the text is trash. Miller combs thrift stores and dumpsters for things to refashion into a visual and audio manifesto that respects the mysteries of the universe at the same time that it probes them. One such work consists of sheets of paper thrown out by some downtown Seattle business, arranged in a rising arc on a gallery wall. Miller roughly crossed out all the information on these documents (you can still see the mid-'60s dates and an occasional word, like "receipts") and then translated the resulting marks into sound files. The sounds are inscrutable, like whale songs or static, but to look at the patterns and listen to the audio derived from it is to sense a connection without being able to articulate it. And perhaps you wouldn't want to: If we knew how the universe worked, what would we then pursue?

Much of extra has this effect: at the same time huh?! and mind-blowing, often oscillating between the two like a panicky heartbeat. The north wall of the gallery is hung with 38 objects that seem both random and ordered, an idiosyncratic inquiry into string theory. There are pieces that make noise--chattering, chirping, roaring like the ocean heard from a distance--some of them made from cast resin embedded with speakers, some from paintings that seem perfectly innocent. The level of the sounds is low enough that you have to get close and listen carefully. Others are simpler, such as annotated pages from an old auction catalogue and collages of cardboard, lottery tickets, and Bazooka wrappers. The series draws you in; you linger, you try to plumb its meaning.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a boat-like sculpture assembled out of old cassette players, turntables, lights, and Styrofoam takeout containers. A long piece of fragile-looking recording tape plays more of those unidentifiable sounds. It's not just a matter of the thing's unbelievable invention; the work is also a speculation on utility, motion, and purpose. Next to it is an enormous wood panel, covered in bubbly shapes like cartoon infant heads degraded by television static. There must be thousands of them, each drawn as carefully as the next, and when you start to think about the time it takes to make such a thing, extra comes into focus.

The show is about time. There's time made visible via effort, via moments frozen in resin, via two eras collapsed--time past, when the auction catalogue was published, and time present, when the artist encountered it. There's time made audible via receipts from 1964 converted into sound, via cast-off, outdated electronics continuing to be heard. There's the time you spend looking at and wondering about the show itself. One suspects that Miller--both the man and his work--is like a scrambled signal, and if we could only decode it, we would be overwhelmed by the kinds of knowledge we would receive. And if we looked closely at how we receive our information, we would learn something about the information itself. Life wouldn't slip away like the dream it so essentially is.